Maximum number of self-created fanworks for an unpopular fandom/ship

[g_uava]

What's the upper limit of fanworks you've created as a self-sustaining fan? That means relying on yourself primarily to sustain your own interest to complete your creative projects since your fandom/ship/favourite is so obscure that feedback and other fanworks to inspire you are hard to come by.

Also, would you have wished to have created more for the same unpopular fandom/ship, even if there remains few others who are just as invested?


The most I've created is around 30,000 words of fics and fewer than 10 non-writing fanworks (icons, gifsets, fanvideos) for a rare pair from an old fandom. It's so rare that there were (and still are) no other English language fanworks for the ship aside from what I've created.

I'm satisfied with what I've created and am glad to move on to another canon that involved tackling a new challenge in my fanworks. But if I were to write for the ship again, I'd more deliberately include a larger variety of fun fanfic tropes in my fics.

Comments

[linky]

That's a good question and an interesting topic for discussion! In my case here I'll be talking about a niche ship in an already niche fandom: Harlock. (At least in the english speaking side, but even in other countries like france or japan where the series is vastly more popular, the ship is still niche.)

For my one Harlock ship I've drawn countless pieces of art for them (I truly cannot count, but my guesstimate is 200+ if I had to combine things also not posted and things both drawn traditionally and digitally across the years), and have written quite a few fics too! (Not all publicly posted either since some are really old.) My entire website also has a dedicated section to the ship, and I've done other things I can too at times. Small graphics like website buttons, and I've done a ship manifesto too!

Even though I'm deep in the toku zone right now, I still think about them and have doodled them still. I'm happy creating things for myself and the maybe 3 other fans who like the pairing. It's how I met my one friend from Japan! Even if the feedback I get is very limited, I still love creating for them. They just make me really happy!

[g_uava]

Must be wonderful to have created fanworks in the triple digits!

I'd like to do the same and 'touch base' with old ships on top of creating for new ones. I thought putting out drabbles is like the writer's equivalent of drawing doodles but so far it isn't as easy!

[jellyfishlover]

For a singular fandom (Mysterious Forum and 7 Rumors), 7 published fics and 23 artworks (as well as a whole fan-page) is the max. Although I've made a bunch of unpublished stuff for it as well...! I'll most likely be adding to that number at some point in the future! :D (And continue getting more esoteric and self-indulgent about it, probably XD)

(Are all ships rarepairs in a fandom in which you're pretty much the only person writing for it? Things to consider...)

I mostly make stuff for unpopular or sleepy fandoms in general. Just because that's the sort of tastes I tend to have, I guess! I don't mind it. I feel like active fandoms can be fun, but it also can just be just too much sometimes, haha!

I write for myself, so I don't mind if there's no hits or anything on what I publish. The motivation for me mostly comes from putting daydreams into a more permanent form for my future self to enjoy. If other people enjoy it, then thats just a bonus!

Also, you creating that much and being the only English fanworks for a rare-pair you like is so cool! Go you! \o/

[sathari]

I write for myself, so I don't mind if there's no hits or anything on what I publish. The motivation for me mostly comes from putting daydreams into a more permanent form for my future self to enjoy.

Cosigned! And I'm kinda thrilled to hear that someone else feels that way too. (I can seldom be bothered to drag myself through the hand-formatting process of posting anything to either DW or most current archive sites, so go you for doing that!)

[g_uava]

'Are all ships rarepairs in a fandom in which you're pretty much the only person writing for it?' -- A market with 1 supplier and 1 consumer is a perfect one lols

Thank you! Let's keep fighting the good fight! \o/

[sathari]

Hahahah, that's the story of my fannish life, in a lot of ways. I'm not sure what my overall word count is, for any one rare fandom or rarepair, but as just one example I've got a Vayne/Penelo fic (Final Fantasy XII) that's a WIP at 125k words and counting. And my Eiko/Kuja (Final Fantasy IX and one of the few things I've ever actually finished and even posted at my journal, go me!) clocks in at 75k. (If Tifa/Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII counts as a rarepair, I've got those too!) (And, oh, don't get me started on my crossovers or rather fusions--- MCU/Downton Abbey, Downton Abbey/Star Wars sequel trilogy, Last Duel/Kushiel-verse....) Anyway, yeah, self-propelled fannishness and ficwriting is, as I say, the story of my life.

[g_uava]

Whoa those are massive works you've written and are still writing! Do you deliberately compress your ideas into 1 fic or do you just naturally come up with story ideas that require lots of words?

[doranwen]

I created 15 for a very tiny fandom (Alphas - fantastic sci-fi show) which has only around 200-300 fics total for it anywhere that I could find (fewer than 200 good ones, lol). What I created: 14 fics/ficlets totaling over 54k words plus one fanvid (the only fanvid I've ever created to date). They aren't *specifically* shippy but one could read a lot of them as such, as I write two of the characters with a relationship that's unstated and undefined in the fics but which could easily come across as somewhere between queerplatonic and romantic friendship.

I'd write more I had the time. (I've got a long WIP in another small-ish fandom that needs finishing first and I'm still so swamped with the Yahoo Groups project plus a few other things I've been working on that I haven't written since a pinch hit I picked up last Yuletide.) Most of the shorter fics (not the 25k one, nor a few other small ones) are part of an AU series I was writing, and I have part of the next fic written (but not posted) before my ideas petered out. I'd also probably need to see if the alpha reader I had then was still around to chat with and help me get past the plot speedbumps that kill so many of my WIPs. She was pretty much the only person I could guarantee would ever comment or cheer me on but one person was all I really needed.

[g_uava]

'fewer than 200 good ones' - 199 good fics would be paradise for me haha

I feel you about really needing just one person. For another of my rare pairs (just less rare than the others), the only reason I could keep writing fic after fic for them was because I had a reader who commented on every single story I put out for 10 months straight.

[flo_nelja]

I have a habit to write obsessively a fic for a pairing I'm the only one in, can't find anyone about it, and when I come back years later, there are other fics, and I'm like "where were you when I was obsessed?" Sometimes it's just 5-10 fics but I would have killed to read them at the time, sometimes it's become a huge ship and I nervously laugh.

I've written 4 one-shots for Scar/Lust in FMA 2003, 3 for Raul/Daedalus in Ergo Proxy, and one seven-chaptered fic for Amber/Bai in Darker than Black.
It's less than you, but it sure felt both exciting and lonely at the time.

[sideways]

Sliding past with a quick highfive for Ergo Proxy AND DtB! Some of my favourite animes still :)

[havendale]

Fun question! Thus far I’ve posted about 10k words of fic for Andra/Denetrus, my Star Wars ultra-rarepair*, with hopefully more to come. It’s a very quiet little corner of the fandom, but I really do love writing them.

* With the caveat that I remain convinced there is more fic out there, most likely on somebody’s ancient Geocities site.

[g_uava]

'I remain convinced there is more fic out there, most likely on somebody’s ancient Geocities site' -- My prayer when I get into a ship from an old (early 2000s) fandom lol. There must be a shippy treasure trove tucked away somewhere for new fans to stumble over like Indiana Jones!

[olivermoss]

For me, right now it's three. I have 1 completed and 2 in-progress fics for a fandom so tiny only one person besides me is even going to read it. But, I am very into this pairing's dynamic and want to play with it a bit more. But, once the three fics are done I am going back to other projects.

The fandom is the Beacon Hill Sorcerer Books. I am starting 3 pairings tags for the fandom, and it's the three canonical pairings. There is only one fic not by me on Ao3.

[g_uava]

Last year I also wrote just 3 fics for a couple of ships in a sleepy fandom and moved on since there weren't any other fans to bounce off ideas with when I was into those ships. 3 is a good amount and slightly above average as most writers seem to at most write just 2 fics for the same pairing.

[scifirenegade]

Besides Doctor Who*, all the fandoms I'm in are obscure. I created 7 fandoms tags on AO3 o_O

One fandom I created a lot of work for and I'm basically alone (I say basically because there's a multifandom fanvid made by someone else, it's great!) is Ich und die Kaiserin. My fics (six in total) are really short, and I did one piece of fanart for it.

The Adventures of Sir Lancelot has a lot more works from me (7 tiny fics and 8 pieces of fanart), but there were 3-4 other people writing for it at some point. I'm the only one remaining though.

I do want to write and draw more for these fandoms, but my artistic mojo has gone kahput for now. It's not because I lack ideas, I simply don't have my mind in the right place to bring them to life :/

*Even there, my favourite parts of the show are first and seventh Doctor eras, which compared to NuWho, are quite small.

[g_uava]

I happen to be a fan of Arthuriana and shows with episodes that are less than 30 mins long, so thanks for the indirect rec for 'The Adventures of Sir Lancelot'! Did you manage to get in touch with the 3-4 other people writing for the show when they were still active?

[feurioo]

I created three fanworks (40.000+ words) and several fanarts, memes, gifs, metas, and even an entire Tumblr with gifs chronicling the relationship (if that counts) for a pairing that never happened.

As far as I'm aware, there's only one other fanfic for this pairing but I never completely read it because it hinged on a character behaving in a way that I found too OOC for my liking. I was writing a 30.000+ word WIP when one of the actors departed the show, so I never finished it. Back in the day, barely anybody cared about my stuff and I doubt it's gotten better almost four years later. Still, I'd love to finish it at one point even if nobody ever reads it.

[g_uava]

'an entire Tumblr with gifs chronicling the relationship (if that counts) for a pairing that never happened' - Wow what's the Tumblr and the pairing/fandom? I've tried doing a similar project to create visual Cliffnotes for my OTPs but always ran out of steam and that's for pairings with lots of interaction in canon.

My sympathies about shelving a WIP because of IRL events :( Haven't happened to me so far but was a constant worry when I was writing RPF.

[arcanetrivia]

I've only been in one fandom where this is the case (my current main fandom, Monkey Island). 10 out of the 132 works on AO3 are mine (and 4 out of the 17 that have been created or updated in the past year), and I think I am the first user of some of then character tags. I also have one WIP that technically I've been working on since late 2021, one fragment that isn't really a WIP yet, and some pretty lengthy drawer-fic. I don't know if I can rightly say that I am "self-sustaining", though, because it's so hard to find motivation to work when I feel like I don't belong in the fandom in the first place and am "doin it rong". Nobody really is interested in fanfic in MI fandom; "it's like fanfic" is often used as an insult against people's personal least favorite game in the series, and generally fanfic is thought of as "low". (Certainly almost nobody is interested in Monkey Island smutfic, which I'm sure I would be regarded as very freakish for writing by most people in the fandom.) There's some interest in fanart (a lot of which is not very transformative) and the thing that really gets people's attention is meta videos, which is not something I have ability or inclination to make.

[g_uava]

Feeling a lack of belonging and "doing it wrong" are familiar worries, especially when there aren't other fanworks to check interpretation and characterization against. Also demotivating when thinking who would really care and cut off support even from oneself.

All the best in writing the smutfic! In my experience, those hold up the best long after the fandom obsession fades.

[sodium_amytal]

"your fandom/ship/favourite is so obscure that feedback and other fanworks to inspire you are hard to come by"
Ah, you've described my fandom experience over the last 6 years xD

One obscure crossover ship I created the tag for and managed an almost 80k-word fic. I think I got all my ship feels out for that one.

Another I created the fandom tag + ship tag and it was about 15k. Did some art, but was kinda relieved it didn't pop off since it's dead-dove lol

Another rarepair/small fandom, I've written most of the fics in the tag, and managed 4 fics + some art before taking a break (~80k), and then picked up and finished an old WIP this year (55k). I wasn't really interested in feedback on that one, it was more For Me than anything else.

I wrote 3 fics + art + playlists for a ship I thought was rare but ended up being more popular than I thought, which was nice!

My current main rarepair has most fics in the ship tag being mine, but I've contributed 11 works to the fandom overall (including a JRPG lmao).

Idk if I would consider myself 'self-sustaining' though. I can do it alone for a while, then I run out of ideas and motivation/interest and sort of require someone else to help me carry the torch. My goal for this year is to figure out how to be self-sustaining in a way that doesn't burn me out.

[g_uava]

'I will fill this ship tag all by myself if I have to' -- The quote from your icon is basically the warcry of rarepair shippers lol

Getting out all the ship feels in a certain number of works is an ideal that's been hard to fulfil. It's like in one fan there's a creator and a shipper, and the shipper just wants more and more.

I'm trying to figure out too how to be self-sustaining in a sustainable and even inspiring way. Then the temptation to align tastes with what's less unpopular won't be as strong.

[sisterdivinium]

That's an interesting question! I'm not sure I can talk about a maximum right now because I'm still head-deep in my current fandom and rarepair. For now, AO3 tells me I've written 12 oneshots as well as my collection of ~50 drabbles (at present) entirely dedicated to the pairing. I did the math and apparently that amounts to almost 68.000 words already... With more on the way, as I have two oneshots waiting in queue to be written, a handful of new drabbles ready to go and the intention of eventually writing a multichapter fic (which is something I never do!) with no length estimate for the time being.

All of this while I'm currently pretty much the only author to write about them frequently and as a main attraction in a fic instead of a side ship the way others write them, if at all. A search with "otp: true" yields 33 results (as opposed to 87 with other ships included), of which 13 works are mine (in an environment of about ~4200 fics total for the whole fandom).

The attention I get is very, very limited but, on the other hand, it tends to be quite satisfying since these readers seem to care a lot more about the work I put into my stories. Last time I posted something more gen I was almost shocked by the superficial response some new readers had to it as opposed to the care my regulars have with my shippy narratives.

It's the first -- and likely the last -- time a ship has inspired me this much, even without the support from fandom at large (which hinges almost fully on the juggernaut ship that I care nothing for, oops) so there's still a lot of passion to sustain me even though I definitely don't get nearly as much feedback as I would if I wrote for The Main Canon Ship. It can be frustrating at times, sure, but I'm having my fun and I think that's what matters in the end.

After this question, however, I'll make sure to do a word recount when I'm done just out of curiosity for what my maximum unpopular ship efforts will have been! :)

[g_uava]

That's lots of fics in the pipeline \o/ It's a great reward for engaged readers who keep coming back. I've been in fandoms where there's one main/juggernaut ship and it's a real delight to run into that one passionate author who keeps putting out stories for a non-juggernaut. Less fun actually being that author, but at least there'd be fond memories and more ship feels shared.

[sideways]

Ooh, interesting question! I don't know if I can really pinpoint an upper limit simply because I'm not very prolific even when I do have someone cheering me on 🤔 And much of what I write is for a pretty limited audience anyway, given the size of these fandoms... but somehow that ends up being the 'numbers go up' motivation in and of itself. If there's at least one or two people enjoying, then I like getting to put a few items on the very sparse shelf!

Anyway. 8 fics for Finisterre is probably the standout at the moment, but I wouldn't say its hit its ceiling yet.

[g_uava]

I'd say 8 fics counts as prolific! My general impression is that most fic authors write max 5 stories per year with about 2 of them for the same ship. 'Numbers go up' motivation really compounds over time and adding to that for me is the motivation to 'colour' the AO3 ship tag with fics of different ratings 😂

[beatrice_otter]

This is interesting to me and I'm having a hard time answering because my fannish interests are only loosely connected to my fannish output.

I have a bazillion ideas in my head, but spend very little time actually writing them down unless I have a deadline. Which means that the vast majority of my fics are written for fanwork exchanges--which means that there HAS to be at least a small audience for it because at least one other person had to ASK for it.

[g_uava]

That's a fair and sustainable way to allocate your energies to focus on fanwork exchanges that indicate some demand for the fics you're thinking of supplying. In past years I've swung the other way and trained myself to mainly come up with ideas I could feasibly write into a complete story, and have been unlearning that a bit to just toy with 'unwriteable' ideas for its own sake.

[svgurl]

I started writing fic because there were very few people writing the ship I fell for, even though it was a fairly big fandom (Smallville). I wrote over 70 fics, though I don't know the total word count, but I have written a couple that were 70k so well over 200k total. More people started to pick up on the ship but it was still definitely on the rare side and I definitely appreciated anyone who did. If I hadn't gotten away from fandom and writing for a good chunk of time, I do think I would've just kept writing them, and there are some days I wish I hadn't lost interest but I probably needed the time away (that I thought was permanent back then).

I have some ships in the same fandom that are more rare that I do wish I had written more of. I still have a lot of ideas - it's just the motivation and the willpower that is the issue. :D

[g_uava]

I've heard about Smallville and its fandom but haven't watched the show. Does your ship happen to involve Clark Kent? The only Smallville ships I've heard of are Clark/Lex and Clark/Lois, and I imagine fanworks would be scarce for a ship which doesn't involve the main character.

The total amount of your fics gives me the impression that you've got a good mix of short and longfics :D That seems rare these days to have an author who can put out numerous novel-length works and shorter ones, especially for rare pairs.

'I do think I would've just kept writing them, and there are some days I wish I hadn't lost interest' -- Same with me and my own ships. Finishing one story leads to getting ideas for 1-2 more, and it's bittersweet to think of the potential lost from not having much of an audience to 'outsource' motivation to.

[quailfence]

Usually only a single fic that’s less than 1k, but that’s the majority of the fannish works I make - out of the 92 works I have on AO3, I’ve written for 6 relationships (5 romantic, q familial) twice, and a single ship (Ninth Doctor/Jack/Rose) three times. I tend to be a bit more consistent with fandomdoms, but there’s sti a lot of fandoms that I’ve only written 1-3 works for on my AO3 profile

As for the ships and fandoms themselves, they’ve ranged from big/popular ships in big/popular fandoms to ships and fandoms that I’ve created the tag for, and everything in between.

[g_uava]

Seems it's usual for most writers to write max 2 ships for the same pairing in a year. No stats to back this up, it's just my general impression.

In the case of the big/popular ships and fandoms you've written for, what led you to not write more for the ship/fandom? Were you already satisfied reading what others have created?

[cuddyclothes]

In 2017 my brain was taken over by the movie "Swiss Army Man", made by the directors of "Everything Everywhere All At Once". It stars Paul Dano as a suicidal man marooned on an island, and Daniel Radcliffe as a dead body who washes ashore. It becomes an incredibly bizarre but sweet love story as Paul teaches the gradually awakening Daniel about life and love. Paul plays both himself and a female alter ego he creates for Daniel. Basically this movie broke me in half, and there was no fandom save for some folks on Tumblr.

I wrote 10 fics in a series, starting with a fix-it, called "After Verse" which totaled 21K.They were an enormous amount of work, in part because I found the script online and was able to match the rhythm of the dialogue. Plus watching YouTube videos about subjects including how to winterize a lean-to. The response has been marvelous, but there are only a few other fics.

[g_uava]

Paul Dano! Daniel Radcliffe! A female alter ego played by a man! I've taken note of this movie post-haste and am glad to see it's also under 2 hours.

Great also to hear that even with the extensive research you've done, you managed to have the fics in your series have an average of ~2k words. That's an accessible length, short but meaty enough for readers curious about fanworks for a more obscure canon and just happened to randomly look it up on AO3.

[hydriotaphia]

This really got me thinking about my writing experience because I've tended to be more of a reader over the last decade until I fell headfirst into my current fandom about 18 months ago.

Most of my AO3 fics are for one fandom, but I tend to write what interests me so I have random little oneshots for obscure things and pairings.

Three of my AO3 fics across three different fandoms are for pairings that I'm the first and only writer for because *shrug* my brain. I get interested in a thought or scene, and I write when I have something to say.

I will admit that I'm not really self-sustaining. The lack of any user feedback does stop me occasionally and there are WIPs that will probably stay drawer-fic because the amount of effort it'd take me to finish them just feels wildly out of proportion with their likely reception. Always amazed and delighted by people who are self-sustaining!

[g_uava]

Just want to say that I like the lil old guy in your icon. He looks like he's from some academic textbook but with more personality than the usual illustrations.

Even drawer-fics need some kind of sustenance or fuel to get to the good parts since writing is often hard work!

[bluedreaming]

This is a fun question!

My fandom is probably Goth (2008)/GOTH (Manga)/ゴス - 乙一 | GOTH - Otsuichi. I’ve only created eight works or so, but it’s a tiny fandom and I continue to dip back into it, so it’s more about the self-sustained motivation 🎉

It's a little confusing across the three media tags with cross-tagging, but:
- if you're looking at the movie tag, there are 15 works, of which six are by me, four were created for me (based on my works), two are ficlets in an anthology-chaptered work, and two are in Chinese (they’re pretty long though, about 20k each! I will get around to reading them one of these days!)
- The book tag adds another work that was written as a gift for me ♡ ♡ ♡
- The manga tag adds one other flashfic.

And that's it! Seventeen works across the three media tags on ao3, and I have another drabble & podfic pair or so that I never got around to getting on ao3, so 19 total that I know of. I do feel, though, that the fact that five of the works being directly related to me means that I’m responsible for 13 of the 19 works. (Though I did write one of them as a gift for someone else.)

I like to dabble in some other small fandoms (I'm currently kind of creating an umbrella fandom of a couple of spooky-adjacent picture books) but GOTH is kind of the one that I keep coming back to.

Edit: honestly, I think most of my experience with creating fanworks is self-sustaining, especially now that I don’t do as many events anymore. It’s nice!

[g_uava]

'I’m responsible for 13 of the 19 works' -- Awesome, from posting in multiple tags related to the canon, it's like you're everywhere in the fandom! When you come back to it, do you create fanworks from pre-existing ideas you haven't got around to working on or do you come up with fanwork ideas for the canon as time goes by?